I try to stay upbeat and positive. I really, really do. But, you know, sometimes I look around at the world around me and can feel my inner angry old man get a little stronger.
Here’s today’s little tidbit of fucking retardity.
As reported on cnn.com, U.S. Representative Paul Broun (R – Idiot) has said, at a recent speech at Liberty Baptist Church in his home state of Georgia, “All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, the Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell,” Interesting. Rep. Broun then went on to say, “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
Now, when Rep. Broun speaks about “all that stuff I was taught”, he means it. Rep. Broun is also known as Dr. Broun. That isn’t Doctor of Philosophy Broun, that’s Doctor Fucking Broun. The man is a fucking medical doctor!
It gets better. He’s also a member of the House’s Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Oh, so he denounces the very foundations of his profession and then thinks he’s qualified to influence the nation’s science policies? Fuck!
This isn’t an isolated case either. Remember Todd Akin? The U.S. Representative from Missouri (R- Retard) that said the delightful things about legitimate rape and the female reproductive system? This fucking Neanderthal is on the SAME FUCKING COMMITTEE!!!!!
You want to know how to fix the country? Education and knowledge, not adherence to the Bible as science. Here’s an idea, let’s put fucking scientists on our country’s fucking science committees!
No, Rep. Broun, if you, as a trained medical doctor, stand up and denounce your scientific education, you are no longer a scientist. You’re a douchebag. Well done, fucktard.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
This is just a short post because I wanted to document my position.
I saw a news report this morning that the unemployment rate for the nation has shown to have dropped to 7.8%. This is the lowest unemployment rate in the Obama administration’s time in office.
Instead of getting praise for the news, the Republican wonks are questioning the validity of the report. In the news of CNN, the Obama administration is being accused of “cooking the books”. After all, the election is in a month.
Stupid fucking Republicans! Really, is that that best you can do? Like all things science or otherwise objective, you just plug your fingers in your ears and say, “Na na na! I can’t hear you!” Seriously, grow the fuck up.
There’s a new video that a news site that I regularly look at (www.rawstory.com) wrote on article about. Seems that Bishop Thomas Paprocki did a video and article that were hosted by the official “newspaper” for the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois. Bishop Paprocki said, among other things, that while it isn’t his job to tell you who to vote for (it isn’t either), if you vote for Barack Obama in November, you could be damning “your own soul” to hell. He went on to say that some of the planks in the official platform of the Democratic Party “explicitly endorse intrinsic evils.” Among these “evils” are temporarily removing God from their platform, supporting abortion rights, and supporting gay rights.
Says the Bishop Tom, “My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues.”
You fucking hypocrite! You damnable bastard! First of all, you are using the time tested and Pope-approved method of controlling your sheep by the use of threats. No, you can’t specifically advocate FOR Romney, but you sure as hell can get up their and tell people that voting for Obama will make them burn in hell for eternity. Instead of advocating FOR (which would threaten your precious non-profit status), you use baseless, senseless fairy tales to grandstand AGAINST.
Furthermore, your stance, Bishop Tom, on the Democratic party itself shows just how ass hat-ish the Catholic Church really is. Yeah, I get that you were upset that the Democratic Party removed “god” from their platform at their convention, but you give them no credit for putting “god” back in (a spineless move, but beside the point). You continue to hold to the company line about the preciousness of every sperm, even in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is threatened. Thanks for the advice on reproductive rights, you non-fucking fucker. Finally, the idea that gay rights are evil is itself evil. You and your collective stand opposed to the idea that someone’s preferences in their fuck partners somehow determines how human they are, as if how someone uses their junk is an accurate gage on how many human rights their should get. Here’s a clue, you fucking moron. Human equals human rights. This applies to gay rights, which is simply the fight for the radical idea that members of the LBGT community should have all the rights and privileges of the rest of the country.
How dare you, you sanctimonious piece of shit?
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
As you may have figured out by now, I’m pretty liberal in my viewpoint. Most of my friends feel the same way, so it was a great day for us when George W. Bush left office and was replaced by Barack Obama. One of the things that so outraged me about Bush was orchestrating and support of the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act was a direct response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The full title of the Patriot Act is the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001” and it took effect on February 1, 2002. While I’m not writing this blog post specifically about this act, understand that the federal government was allowed unprecedented powers to detain and monitor the activities of Americans, sort of like a proto-Orwellian society.
I welcomed Obama, partially because I believed he would undo a lot of the damage that W. Bush had done, such as the Patriot Act. However, I was to be horribly disappointed when, on May 26, 2011, President Obama signed a four-year extension of the three main parts of the Patriot Act, allowing continued roving wiretaps, searches of business records, and the conducting of surveillance on individuals.
So, okay, Obama didn’t live up to his promise of hope and change, but at least he was no worse that W. Bush, right? I had thought so, but then I heard about the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA).
This version of the NDAA, which has been annually reauthorized since its original passing in 2007, is far and away the most evil. The particular problem revolves around Sections 1021 and 1022. Section 1021 allows for the indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, who are deemed to be a threat, and without the benefit of a trial. Section 1022 goes on to say that all people detained under Section 1021 are REQUIRED to be held by the United States Armed Forces, whether or not they are detained on American soil.
Sections 1021 and 1022 have been called violations of the Constitution, and rightfully so. They allow the United States military to detain suspects that are suspected of committed “belligerent acts” indefinitely and without charge or trial. For the first time in over 200 years, the United States military is authorized to carry out domestic policing, thanks to the NDAA.
President Obama issued a Statement of Administration Policy on November 17, 2011 that threatened to veto the NDAA over Sections 1021 and 1022. Interestingly, the reasons weren’t because they went too far or stripped too many rights, but because Obama believed that the government already possessed the power granted in those sections and spelling them out posed a risk. Nevertheless, President Obama did indeed threaten to veto the NDAA.
The NDAA was passed in the House by a vote of 322 to 96 on May 26, 2011. It was then passed by the Senate by a vote of 86 to 13 on December 13, 2011. Obama signed the NDAA into law on December 31, 2011.
My point isn’t that the NDAA is so horrible (it is). My point is that this shitty piece of legislation passed not under the watch of a neo-con fuckhead like W, but under the Hope™ and Change™ merchant Obama. Under W, at least I understood the idiot he was, so there were no surprises. He was an idiot and he acted like an idiot, so at least he didn’t lie.
Obama is different. He wanted to bring the country together and bring new prosperity to the United States. His actions with the NDAA show a different intent though. When faced with such a horrible piece of legislation, Obama publically denounced it and promised a veto, but when it was presented to him, he happily signed it into law, and in doing so allowed more potential havoc among American citizens than any President before him, W included.
Obama promised not to use those powers against us, but that isn’t the point. The point is that he KNEW the NDAA went beyond the authority allowed in the Constitution (the fact that he had to make that promise points to that), he promised he would veto it, and he signed it anyway.
People have sued over the NDAA, and a federal Judge Katherine Forrest ruled that Section 1021 is “facially unconstitutional” and granted a temporary restraining order against the enforcement of Section 1021. The fact that people had to sue over the NDAA and that one of Obama’s own fucking appointees had to tell Obama, a Constitutional scholar, that it was unconstitutional, is beyond horrible and into the land of evil.
Thanks a whole lot, Mr. Obama.
I have a friend that not only believes in psychic ability but also practices as a professional psychic. The friend operates through one of the 900 psychic hotlines and has several repeat customers. The friend also operates on a consultant basis as a pet psychic and has been paid to travel around the country to tell worried pet owners what Rover is feeling. My friend hates it when I mock him by holding my hand up to my head, closing my eyes, and saying, “Your dog wants steak”.
So, yay, he’s a professional psychic. He claims to be able to channel an inter-dimensional being through a process he calls “falling” and to be able to see and hear the dead and other spiritual entities. I’ve been witness to both of these alleged phenomena and must say, my friend puts on an entertaining show, but I have yet to learn the secret to eternal happiness or the location of a secret pot of gold that will let me retire to a secluded island. Come to think of it, none of the clairvoyance that he claims to have has led him to the secret of eternal happiness or the location of a secret pot of gold either.
I might not be convinced, but apparently dozens of other people are, as his psychic hotline statistics will attest. Could it be that, despite my negative anecdotal experiences, my friend is really psychic? Can he indeed tell what is wrong with Rover or let you know what your dead grandmother has to say? Can he really predict the future for strangers over the phone for 99 cents a minute?
Well, it does seem that such a powerful Jedi ought to have avoided the following circumstance. I will simply throw it out there and let you judge for yourself.
The friend, who for ease of writing I’ll now refer to as Bob, has been incardinated for several years for a previous non-violent offense. He had formed a relationship with a young female that was legal in the state where they met, but was illegal in the great state of Missouri. Well, not so great.
After many years, Bob got out of prison and moved to my area of the country. Bob immediately began telling everyone about his history as a psychic and operating as a reader at one of the local coffee shops. It never dawned on any of us to ask why he didn’t foresee what would happen to him if he moved to Missouri with the lovely lass, but that’s beside the point.
About three years went by until Bob got a letter from his court agent in Missouri. Turns out that Bob had made a verbal agreement that it would be all right for him to send monthly emails to the agent and that he wouldn’t have to appear in person. This apparently was fine for three year, but now all of sudden, the agent apparently needed to see Bob in person, so Bob went.
Upon his arrival, the agent, who sounds a hell of a lot like a parole officer even though Bob insisted he wasn’t on parole, promptly escorted him into an adjacent courtroom. They were waiting for Bob. The judge said that the verbal agreement wasn’t fulfilling the obligations of Bob’s release and sentenced Bob to one month in jail. Bob never even got to leave the courtroom and was incarcerated immediately.
It was a douchebag move by the state of Missouri. I don’t deny that. However, here’s the question.
If you are such a good psychic, why didn’t you see it coming?
I don’t know what Bob could have done differently. I’m not a lawyer. However, the fact is that Bob was 100% caught off guard by the actions of the agent and of the judge. He had no idea at all that this trap was being set and that he was being targeted.
If Bob is the most successful psychic I know, and he is judging by financial success, then maybe this experience suggests that Bob isn’t truly psychic, but is gifted at reading people.
Or perhaps, Bob is a charlatan.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
My last blog post was about the Islamic over reaction to the douchey movie about Muhammad. I have been thinking about why we see so much Islamic extremism. I don’t mean the terrorism so much, like 9/11. I mean the way the eastern Islamic world seems to be so aggressive when responding to news they don’t like and they way they treat each other. I mean, how many times can you hear a news story about some Taliban members cutting the heads off fifteen of their fellow Afghan citizens for the heinous crime of co-ed dancing before you begin to wonder what the fuck is going on over there?
The Islamic religion was founded around the year 610, the year that Muhammad supposedly received the verses of the Koran from Gabriel. By that time, the Christian religion had been around for approximately 600 years. It took a few centuries for Christianity to take on an identity that we would identify today, true, but that is the story of the Christians at any rate.
This is the year 2012. Take 2012 and subtract 610 and you get 1492, the year that Columbus reached the Americas.
Think about what Christianity looked like in 1492. Columbus was backed by Ferdinand and Isabel, who were the rulers of Spain. They had separated the Spanish Inquisition from the powers of the Roman Catholic Church in 1480 and used the Spanish Inquisition to torture and kill an estimated 2,000 Spanish citizens, several of them Moslems and Jews. This does not even consider the Jews that were expelled from Spain or the Moslems that were ordered to convert or die.
The Spanish Inquisition was an offshoot of the time period known as the Inquisition. While the church had always suppressed perceived heresy (see Charles the “Great”, also knows as Charlemagne) the Inquisition itself began in the 12th century. The thing that separated the Inquisition from plain old suppression was the systematic use of torture and execution.
The first Inquisition was established in the south of France in 1184. This began a time period of fire and blood. Pope Innocent the IV issued a bull in 1252 that formally authorized torture as a means to confession, which was simply authorizing what the inquisitors were doing anyway. The Malleus Maleficarum, a handbook for inquisitors on how to deal with witches in Germany, was written by Heinrich Kreimer in 1487, just five years before Columbus took off.
The Inquisition lasted about 500 years, and in fact, the Spanish Inquisition remained a legal body in Spain until the early 19th century. The numbers of victims of the Inquisition are difficult to determine, as any official record is somewhere in the vaults of the Vatican, but realistic estimates (which does NOT include the 9 million number that the Pagan community likes to throw around) range from around 6,000 to 15,000, based on the information I was able to find in a five minute Google search. The death toll is about 2% of the number of trials that the Inquisition held though. One example that comes to mind of a torture victim is a Templar Knight who was tortured under questioning and allowed to live, but was sent to the court to state his confession with a wooden box hung around his neck. Inside the box were the ashes of what had previously been his feet, which were burned off during the investigation.
Although there are still come pretty wacky Christian sects today, we don’t see the sort of uber-superstitious activity that the Inquisition displayed as a state policy anymore.
Looking at the development of Christianity then, we generally see that it took about four centuries for it to be accepted and firmly established (Fall of Rome), about four centuries more to start making states (Holy Roman Empire in 800), and then about four more centuries to fall into superstitious acts of death, torture, blood, and fire. That was twelve centuries of development of the Christian religion.
If we apply twelve centuries of time to Islam, we get a year of 1810. Assuming that religions will follow similar patterns of development, this should be about the time of their “inquisition”. Well, what do you know? A quick search shows that modern Islamic fundamentalism traces its roots back to the 1800’s and a movement called Wahhabi. Wahhabi began as a conservative view of Islam, but it became militaristic in the mid-20th century. It was the basis of the creation of the state of Saudi Arabia and the fall of the Shah in Iran in the 1970’s.
Here’s the point. If Christianity took 11-1200 years to have their fall into ignorance and stupidity of 500 years, then it isn’t unrealistic, based on this very “broad brush” history, to assume that Islam is in the throws of their fall into ignorance and stupidity as well. I would argue that Islam is about one century into it, only this time their fall into ignorance and stupidity comes not with swords and torches but with guns and bombs.
If I’m right, then we have another four hundred years to look forward to of hearing about stonings of rape VICTIMS, beheadings of clandestine dancers, and terrorism in general, all in the name of Islam just as the Inquisition was in the name of Christianity.
Again, a point I’ve previously made, better that man had never invented religion.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
A short film was released to the world this week. It is called Innocence of Muslims and runs all of 13 minutes and 51 seconds. It is obviously very low budget and shows one man’s view on the life of Muhammad and the birth of Islam. It’s a silly movie and lots of obviously face beards and poor effects and horrible acting. Search for “Innocence of Muslims” on Youtube and you can see it for yourself.
The Islamic world has reacted very rationally to this horrible attempt at humor at their prophet’s expense.
Oh, wait, not they haven’t. Here’s some highlights of the Islamic world’s response:
• The death of the Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the ambassador to Libya, after a rocket attack that also killed three other people
• Three people were killed and 28 were wounded in protests at the U.S. embassy in Tunisia
• Armed men set fire to a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Tripoli (because everyone knows that the Colonel runs the free world)
• Rocks were thrown at the U.S. Consulate office in southern India
• The German embassy in Sudan was attacked
• About 2,000 protesters gathered in Nigeria in the city of Jos and they started to move toward the city center, at which point the Nigerian security forces had to intervene
• Hundreds of protesters came together in Afghanistan to burn an American flag and chant “Death to America”. Although the protest lasted about an hour and ended peacefully, the Afghan government blocked the country’s access to Youtube to prevent further viewings of the film.
• In Baghdad, hundreds of followers of the radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr chanted “No to America, no to Israel.”
• In Jerusalem, Palestinians marched from the al-Aqsa mosque toward the U.S. Consulate, but were prevented from reaching the mission by Israeli riot forces.
• In Syria, hundreds gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Damascus. Protesters waved placards that condemned the film and blamed the U.S. administration for allowing the production and broadcast of it, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.
• In Iran, the Islamic Propagation Coordination Council called for nationwide rallies Friday to protest the film and what it is calling a U.S.-backed plot against Muslims, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
• Ninety-three protesters have been arrested in Egypt since Thursday night, Egyptian Interior Ministry spokesman Alaa Mahmoud said. Forty-eight officers have been injured, he added.
I found these events after researching the Islamic response in only ten minutes on a single news website (www.cnn.com). These events all revolve around a stupid homemade movie that lasts less then fourteen minutes.
My point isn’t to attack the Islamic world or to condemn the production of the movie. My point is this.
If there was no such thing as religion, none of this would have happened and the people that have been hurt or killed over this overblown event would still be alive.
It is unclear, at least as I write this, who exactly was behind the movie, but having seen it, I think it is a fair assumption that there is a clear anti-Muslim sense of religiousity behind it, meaning that the movie was made thanks to someone’s religious motivations. The response of the Islamic world is extreme, to say the least, but that response would never have come if they didn’t have their respective religious beliefs, such as their prohibition against the portrayal of Muhammad
If the film’s producer didn’t have his beliefs, the movie wouldn’t have been made. If the Islamic world didn’t have their beliefs, their violent response wouldn’t have occurred. Therefore, to me, this isn’t so much as an “anti-Muslim” post so much as an “anti-religion” post.
Religion, of any form at all, is nothing more than the personal belief in a superhuman or divine power or principle. To Christians, this is God and Jesus. To Muslims, this is Allah. To others, there are other superhumans that apply, such as Vishnu, Ganesh, Odin, Zeus, The Great Spirit, or simply God in a wishy-washy ambivalent New Age form of love.
It doesn’t matter which of these religion you want to buy into or which superhuman you want to spend time praying to. The problem is when you apply objective standards of right or wrong to your subjective, personal experience.
If I say that my superhuman is the best (I have an action figure of Batman on my desk) and you say that your superhuman is the best (Superman?) then right away we have a disagreement. If the disagreement stays at that level, then there is room for debate and education. Having listened to you, maybe I’m encouraged to go out and read a few Superman comics to see what you’re so gaga about. I don’t have to change my favorite superhuman, but maybe my world is bigger and I’ve learned something.
Now replace “Batman” with “Jesus” and “Superman” with “Allah”. The same argument applies. If the disagreement is kept at a normal level, we can compare and contrast world views and learn something from each other.
Unfortunately, people get too passionate about defending their divine superhumans, and that passion often turns to anger. This week’s Islamic response to a shitty movie is how I started thinking about this, but Christians have brought us abortion clinic bombings, the Ku Klux Klan, and in more distant times, the Crusades.
There is a rational answer to this problem, and that is to realize that Jesus, Allah, Batman, and Superman are all equally valid and drop religion all together. Certainly, continue to have your stories in your Bibles and your Korans, but stop thinking of them as moral or legal dictates and start thinking of them as cultural stories and fables.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may coming up with the idea that I’m just a sad, pessimistic old man with a small issue with depression. You would be wrong. I’m a sad, pessimistic middle aged man with a small issue with depression!
Still, to paraphrase a somewhat famous quote, sad and angry is no way to go through life, son. So, I wanted to write a happy article. Not like the “things that make me happy” article I’ve already written (See Angry Happy Truth #7). I want to write an article that points out truly positive things about mankind. Pointing out the dark and stupid shit in society is easy. Finding bright spots, well, that takes work.
See, there I go again, passive aggressively attacking society!
I spent a few moments trying to think of something to write about, but I was stumped. I decided that I needed to look beyond myself and find an external source of material. I fired up the interwebs and checked out cnn.com. Here’s the main headline:
“U.S. Ambassador Killed; Envoy to Libya dies in rocket blast.”
Ooh, I feel bad for that guy (Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in case you were wondering) but while I note the importance of that, I’m looking for something good and positive to write about, and unless you’ve got Mr. Stevens in your deathpool, this isn’t it.
So, let’s go down the list below the headline:
“Hundreds dead in Pakistan factory fire”
“North Korea rebuffs aid offer from South”
“Cartoonist gets sedition charge, bail”
“Obama, Netanyahu discuss Iran”
“Chicago school strike hits third day”
“Mayors: Judge teachers by kids’ scores”
“Police: Truck buried for doomsday”
“Spain secessionist fervor grows”
“UBS whistle-blower nets $104M reward”
Well, never mind then. Maybe going to the website of a national news outlet as a source of happy news isn’t a great idea. I followed that up with my local newspaper’s website. I don’t want to quote the headlines word for word, as I don’t want to give away where I’m writing from that easily, but here’s what’s going on locally:
• The FBI is returning 40% of the fireworks they seized from a local vendor in 2007
• A recent crime rise is blamed on heroin
• Police are investigating a rape at a local nursing home
• A woman was stabbed near a local hotel
• 98 Degrees is planning a reunion album
Holy shit! Nothing very happy to see here, especially that bit about a shitty boy band getting back together.
All right, maybe I’m just not used to finding happy things. After all, my own mother once said that she thinks I have a “dark streak”, and when your mother is saying that, then maybe you shouldn’t be surprised at the amount of black clothing in your closet.
So, here’s a challenge for you all. You send me an email about something happy or positive in the world. Maybe some orphanage somewhere just received a bunch of money from a charity. Maybe some airplane was saved from certain destruction when it was safely landed in the middle of a ball park. Maybe a bunch of puppies was saved from a Nike factory in Asia. I don’t know, and that’s the point.
You give me the topic and a few details. I’ll research it and write about it, crediting you in the process. It can’t be that hard to find something positive to write about, right?
Right?
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
I was sitting in a hospital Tuesday and waiting for the clearance for a test. I was waiting in the office of the woman that was trying to coordinate everything and we got to talking about the ass-hattery of insurance companies. Note that this is a woman whose job depends on insurance companies.
Anyway, she had a story that I’m sharing here. Seems that she has these friends who have a six year old daughter. The daughter needed a heart transplant, which is a shitty thing to happen anyway, but the fact that it happened to a six year old, well, let’s just say that’s the sort of thing that supports my opinion on God.
Anyway, the family’s insurance company approved the heart transplant surgery, so the little girl got a new heart. Now, the next thing she had to do as a transplant patient was to take the anti-rejection pills, because I don’t know if you know this or not, but when anyone gets an organ transplanted into their body, they have to take special medicine to keep their body’s defenses from destroying the new organ. In other words, while the transplant saved the girl’s life, that effort would be in vain without the medications.
Here’s where the insurance company showed what fucktarded douchebags they are. They called the heart condition, which they had just cleared up, a pre-existing condition and FUCKING REFUSED TO PAY FOR THE PILLS!!!!! In other words, they effectively condemned the girl to death after saving her life. See, the pills aren’t exactly over the counter aspirins. They cost, according to the woman I heard the story from, about $6,000 per month. The only thing that’s allowing this family to get the money for the medicine to keep their daughter alive is the fact that they attend a megachurch that takes a weekly collection for the family.
This is one small example, but there are fucking books written on the bastards that make up the insurance industry.
Now, I’m going to seem to switch topics. Stay with me here, I’m making a point.
Remember the Occupy movement of 2011? I spent some time with my local Occupy movement. The anger was real. The issues that the Occupiers had were legitimate. However, even as I was grabbing the megaphone and working the crowd or beating the drum at passing cars, I knew that the Occupy movement would fail. Why? Because for the Occupy movement to succeed in changing anything, it would have to be more than a movement, it would have to be a revolution.
Ever wonder what happened to the Occupy movement? Essentially, it was killed not through bullets on conflict, but through bureaucracy. All across the country, local Occupy movements were simply told be police officers that local ordinances prohibited them from staying in their locations and they had to break up. They had the right to gather, sure, but the moment they started staying overnight, the Occupiers were nothing more than vagrants in the eyes of the government.
This was the moment of truth for the Occupy movement. They could forcibly resist the orders to disperse and force the local governments around the country to use force. This could have led to a revolution. Instead, except for a few rouges that ended up getting arrested, the Occupiers went home. They peacefully protested, and when politely asked, they peacefully went home. As a result, the Occupy movement didn’t mean jack shit in the end.
People in the United States are angry. The issues with the insurance companies and the issues with the big banks (fuck you Bank of America, die in a fire Chase) boil down to the same thing to me. Anger at big, faceless corporations that have been granted personhood by the fucking federal government and anger at a fucking federal government that allows the big, faceless corporations to act like the colossal dicks that they do.
I don’t care if you are a democrat or a republican. From what I’ve seen, both sides agree that the United States is broken. You know something? It fucking is. Our elected officials sell us out to the highest bidder. Environmental laws are skirted. Our tax dollars go to bail out banks, who turn around and hoard the money as they continue to foreclose on homes that they gave the loans out for. Congress is beset by lobbyists. Our people continue to get fatter and fatter, while our Evil Health Trinity of insurance, pharmacy, and hospitals keep treating symptoms and not causes, simultaneously prolonging our lives while taking away the quality of that life. Meanwhile, our elected officials don’t give a flying fuck and choose to spend their time arguing about who you’re fucking, what you’re smoking, and what brown people on the other side of the world they should blow up next.
We are down to two options. We either need to force the system to change or we continue to play with our iPads and watch our celebrity shows and allow the system to continue as it is. If we choose the second option, then the system will get worse, not better, and we will still face the same question again in the future. People, not that I’m encouraging it, it is my opinion that a revolution is coming. Not necessarily in blood and bullets, perhaps in voter booths and further Occupy-ish movements, but make no mistake, blood and bullets aren’t out of the question. We the people are getting screwed by the very system that we put in place, and the people we elected to fix the system are nothing more than cogs in the system’s wheels.
WAKE THE FUCK UP!!! We have to change the system and take back control of our lives! We have to stop allowing our lives to be controlled by faceless corporations and bastard bureaucrats. If we don’t, then more and more of our liberties and freedoms will slip through our fingers. If we don’t, then the country will keep going down this road, and believe me, as dark as our times are, they can get worse. A whole fuck of a lot worse.
We have to ask ourselves a serious question. How dark are we willing to let things get before we fight back?
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
I’ve been giving a lot of time to the ‘Angry’ side of the Angry Happy Truth triangle. So, I thought for today, I’d concentrate on some things that make me ‘Happy’.
I’ve written previously about how happiness is a state, not an emotion. I stand by that, and I’m amazed at how many people have agreed with me. There are certainly things that put me in a state of happiness. Here are some:
Calling out those people who need to be called out. I was buying a cup of coffee the other day in a store and I was having to wait forever because the woman in front of me, who had completed her fucking purchase, was going on and on about how the counter woman shouldn’t consider shooting the predator birds that were threatening her chickens. This went back and forth, and it was eating up my lunch hour, so I interjected and said, “Hey lady, have you eaten a hamburger?” She looked embarrassed and walked away, and my heart swelled. I was happy because I showed a hypocrite for what she was and I got my coffee! This is also why, even though it made me so mad that I cried when I read it, it also made me happy to write my last post remembering Rachel Corrie and calling out Israel as a country of fucking fucktardy murderers.
Legitimately helping people. I’m a local government employee and many times in my career, I’ve had to work with citizens who had no idea how our government’s process worked. When I’m able to make some homeowner happy because I’m able to find a loophole in our process, or when I’m able to make an applicant more comfortable about the process that they have to go through, I swell with happiness. It was this desire that drove me to become a volunteer responder with my adopted community as well.
Public speaking. This can actually be expanded somewhat to performing. I’ve acted, I’ve been a musician, and I’ve given speeches. In a perfect world, I’d be a professional public speaker. The bigger the crowd, the better. In fact, public speaking is one of the things that keeps my career tolerable. I’m currently trying to work up a stand up act, just so that I can attend open mic nights and get back up in front of crowds. That’s also part of the reason why I’m working on the associated Angry Happy Truth podcast. Basically, I’m an attention whore. If I could suspend my disbelief, I’d be a kick ass televangelist!
Drinking. Say what you want about what this says about me, but I loves me a good, cold dark beer. I like whiskey on the rocks. I like screwdrivers too, and I like all of this drinking with friends in taverns. I know enough not to drink on work hours and when to be responsible and when it’s okay to let go, and after many years of hard experience, I know where the line between ‘happy’ and ‘hangover’ is!
All of these things actually have a common theme, and it’s something I’ve written about before. I find my happiness by living out my intent. Yeah, it’s my will to correct the hypocrites and liars of the world, to help those who need my help, to add the spice of alcohol to my life, and to perform. So, if you want to be happy too, ask yourself, what is your intent? If you can answer that question, and if you have the balls to follow the answer up with action, then you can be happy.
If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, things you’d like to see me comment on, or something you would like to discuss, you can contact me at angryhappytruth@gmail.com.
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